Self-Assertion and Spiritual Resistance. The History of the Jewish Community Center in Hamburg

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The founding of the Jewish community center and
its opening ceremony in the Hamburg neighborhood of Rotherbaum on January 9, 1938 was an unmistakable sign of
self-assertion and spiritual resistance. It was reflected in the inaugural
speech given by banker Max Moritz
Warburg, both in his words and between the lines. The typewritten
manuscript of this speech is 6.5 pages long and is kept at the Leo Baeck Institute in
New York. It
was thanks to Warburg’s financial and personal support that the project
“Jüdisches Gemeinschaftshaus
G.m.b.H.” was realized, creating a venue for the
Hamburg Jewish Cultural
AssociationJüdischer Kulturbund Hamburg, which had
been banned from its previous performance venues. Warburg was not only one of
the Jewish Cultural Association'sJüdischer
Kulturbund most important supporters, but
also the association’s advocate in its constant conflicts with the German-Israelite Congregation.
While the opening of the community center on
Hartungstraße 9–11
certainly represents a significant marker in Hamburg’s Jewish
cultural life during the National
Socialist regime, it is its history prior to and after this event in
particular that makes this place so special.

The history of the building

The story begins in the mid-19th
century when the so-called “Pfennigsche Villa,” named
after Hamburg
merchant Ferdinand Pfennig, who had commissioned the
building, was built on Hartungstraße. In 1904 the “Logenheim” society bought the building, and the
Henry Jones-Lodge
(chaired by Gustav Tuch) moved in after major
remodeling. Two other Jewish lodges, the Hamburg Society for Jewish
FolkloreHamburgischer Verein
für jüdische Volkskunde and the Hamburg Association for Jewish History and
LiteratureHamburgischer Verein für jüdische Geschichte und
Literatur, were among the other
organizations finding a home in the building, which soon turned into a center of
Jewish life in Hamburg. Due to the Great Depression the
building was sold in 1930 to the Hamburg
Anthroposophical Building SocietyBau-Verein
Hamburger Anthroposophen, but Jewish
institutions were able to continue to use the space for cultural events. Five years later the Anthroposophical SocietyAnthroposophische
Gesellschaft was banned nationwide by the
National Socialist regime and the building was cleared and sealed. Since the
property was mortgaged to the Jewish congregation, there was no interested buyer. Eventually
the Gestapo offered the
congregation the “option to buy” the building.

Thus the Jüdisches Gemeinschaftshaus
G.m.b.H. was born on February 1st, 1937. The purchase had become possible due to a large
fundraising campaign, the success of which was largely the work of Max Moritz Warburg. A
partner in the banking house M. M.
Warburg & Co., he was considered one of the most important
bankers of his time.

Arguments for and against a Jewish community
center

The project was by no means uncontroversial, and it faced various obstacles, as
Warburg mentions
in his speech. Citing the fact that Jews were increasingly driven out of the
country and a supposedly diminished interest in cultural events, its critics
mainly took issue with the project’s high cost. They also feared that the
establishment of a Jewish community center would
become the physical manifestation of the “intellectual ghetto” the community
already found itself in. Meanwhile the project’s supporters, who prevailed in
the end, particularly emphasized the psychological value. Under the protection
of a Jewish institution, they argued, would emerge a social and cultural center
that would serve as a “source of moral strength” and do its share to ensure that
“Jewish people gather and become grounded, to find inner calm and a higher
peace.”

Functions of the Jewish community center

The commission for the building’s extensive remodeling was given to renowned
architects Fritz
Block, Ernst
Hochfeld, and Oscar Gerson. Banker
Martin E. Goldschmidt served as
executive secretary, and a 14-member advisory board was
created under the supervision of attorney
Rudolf Samson. In addition to a stage and theater, the building
housed a library, a lecture hall, a restaurant, and a ninepin alley in the
basement. These facilities were primarily intended for use by the
Jewish Cultural AssociationJüdischer
Kulturbund, the Franz-Rosenzweig Memorial Foundation, and by smaller
associations and committees.

Warburg’s criticism
of National Socialist anti-Jewish policies

In his speech, which received much attention, Warburg called the exclusion
of Jews from many professions a heavy burden dampening all joy. Nevertheless it
was important to face facts and not be crushed by one’s worries. Warburg went on to say that
the establishment of the community center meant
the creation of “a place of gathering, of uplift and thus also of affirmation
and enjoyment of life.” It was the purpose of community to protect people from
being “crushed by the everyday battles of life” and from getting lost “in murky
air and unsettled goings-on.” Well aware that members of the Gestapo were present, he
nevertheless explicitly pointed out the marginalization and humiliation of the
Jewish population. Warburg even went one step further when he called the theater a
“source of moral strength,” thus ascribing to the arts the power to create
identity and inspire courage: “Whoever feels this truth will become free.” The
fact that he underpinned this message with a quote from the “Prelude on Stage”
out of “Faust”, thus ignoring the prohibition
to perform or quote from Goethe on a Jewish stage, seems to have escaped the censors. Nor
did they seem to notice that Warburg’s admonition to observe “the laws of our homeland” was
in fact an identification with Germany in the name of
all those present while Warburg also asked visitors not to park their cars on Hartungstraße and that they enter
and leave the building quietly so they would remain invisible to the center’s
non-Jewish neighbors. It took him only three words to describe the German Jews’
situation at the time both accurately and provocatively.

The Jewish Cultural
Association

Since its foundation in 1934 the Jewish Cultural
AssociationJüdischer
Kulturbund had become the only place
where many of those affected by National Socialist persecution could satisfy
their cultural needs thanks to its artistic variety, albeit on a limited scale.
While it did serve as a refuge for a community of the marginalized, the Cultural Association Kulturbund untiringly confirmed its will
to defy the physical and psychological attrition of its members by engaging with
Western arts and culture. In a community such as the Cultural Association Kulturbund it was always possible to communicate on two levels, i. e.
to utter words and at the same time express what remained unsaid by other means,
thus engaging in a kind of subversive communication about one’s existing
circumstances. As in other dictatorships, theater had assumed the role of an
outlet.

A rebellious program

A look at the program put together by the Jewish Cultural Association Jüdischer
Kulturbund confirms this assessment. One
example was Richard
Beer-Hofmann’s drama “Jaakobs
Traum” [“Yaakov’s Dream”], which
makes reference to the Old Testament and tells the story of the chosen people of
Israel. In September 1935 – simultaneous with the
passing of the Nuremberg
Laws – it opened the Cultural Association's Kulturbund theater season.
Hamburg’s
Jewish audience could hardly have been confronted with the topics of Jewish
identity and Jewish fate in a more striking and visionary way. The fact that
this theatrical provocation was barely noted by the censors does not diminish
its significance as a public act of revolt and a comment on political reality.
Another example was dancer and
choreographer
Erika Milee, whose choric dance performance,
“Der Sieg der Makkabäer” [“The Victory of
the Maccabees”], went far beyond the historical dimension to become a timeless
symbol of revolt against any form of repression. The fact that a classical drama
such as “Hamlet” expressed the mood of both artists and audience is documented
by the extensive press coverage prior to and after its performance. The staging
of this Shakespeare
play in particular showed that the artistic self-image of those in charge of the
Cultural Association Kulturbund, who refused to
omit the central soliloquy, “To be, or not to be,” was able to prevail against
the intellectual blindness of Berlin censors. The
plays of comedic playwright Franz
Molnar, too, criticized the contemporary circumstances forced
upon the Jews. The great success of Willy Hagen’s programs
demonstrates to what extent this cabaret artist became the
voice of his large audience despite repeated censorship.

The end of the Jewish community center

In January 1939 National Socialist authorities
withdrew the Cultural
AssociationKulturbundHamburg’s status
as an independent association. The institution itself, including the community center, continued to exist, however. Now a
branch of the national organization Jewish Cultural Association in Germany
Jüdischer Kulturbund in
Deutschland based in Berlin, the center
hosted guest performances by the Berlin theater
ensemble, chamber concerts, variety shows, and especially film screenings. On
September 11, 1941 the Jewish Cultural Association in
GermanyJüdischer Kulturbund in Deutschland was
dissolved by the Gestapo
and its assets liquidated. A few weeks later the community
center on Hartungstraße was turned into an office for provisions and
supplies for the beginning deportations. On July 11,
1942 it became a collection point for one of the transports from
Hamburg to
Auschwitz. After
the Allied bombings and the partial destruction of the city’s theaters in 1943 the building became the makeshift home of the
Thalia Theater, and
nine months later it became the location of the “Ufa-Kammerspiele” as part of
the total mobilization.

The building on Hartungstraße after 1945

On May 10, 1945 the building was confiscated by
the British military
government. The Army Welfare
Service established a cabaret in it, but in July of the same year Hamburg’s cultural authority filed a request that the building be
made available for staging Kammerspieleintimate theater. This initiative was
launched by Jewish actress
Ida Ehre
who, with major support from British theater officer
John Olden, was
looking for a venue to stage plays about “human problems and global problems”.
The request was granted and Ida
Ehre became the leaseholder of the Jüdisches
Gemeinschaftshaus G.m.b.H. On December 10,
1945 the Hamburger
Kammerspiele theater opened
with a performance of Robert
Ardrey’s play “Leuchtfeuer”Beacon. Ida Ehre’s “theater of
humanity” Theater der
Menschlichkeit, which was meant to be dedicated to
international reconciliation, almost literally quoted the hope expressed by
Max Moritz Warburg
in his 1938 inaugural speech at the Jewish community center: the program notes of December 1945 state that theater must “serve only one
purpose, the purpose of all true art: to seek the eternal truths and give
expression to them.”

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This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.

About the Author

Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Dr. phil, was until 2009 research assistant at the Zentrum für Theaterforschung and lecturer at the institute for german language and literature studies II of the university of Hamburg. She was the co-founder of the festival for new directors Die Wüste lebt (1996-2002) and was drafting the Körber Studio Junge Regie, which she is co-organising since 2003.

Recommended Citation and License Statement

Barbara Müller-Wesemann, Self-Assertion and Spiritual Resistance. The History of the Jewish Community Center in Hamburg (translated by Insa Kummer), in: Key Documents of German-Jewish History, June 08, 2017.
<https://dx.doi.org/10.23691/jgo:article-136.en.v1> [February 22, 2019].

This text is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution - Non commercial - No Derivatives 4.0 International License. As long as the work is unedited and you give appropriate credit according to the Recommended Citation, you may reuse and redistribute the material in any medium or format for non-commercial purposes.